Thursday, April 30, 2015

A Hidden Blessing



This morning I awoke with the goal of posting some of the videos I'd taken this month onto my YouTube channel. Due to our slow internet connection, I have to do this early in the morning or late at night for the quickest result without interruption.

I started with a video that was the result of a camera error. You see, I usually keep the video settings on my Nikon P500 CoolPix as HD (High-Definition) instead of HS (High-Speed) mainly because the HS doesn't work well. With HS, the videos are too slow and there's either no sound of the sound quality is drawn out. Sometimes the HS video won't play on my laptop. At other times, the HS video is very dark and hard to see.

But this time, I love the result...





I don't know how something marked High Speed can give such a slow video, but then I don't understand all the intricacies of a camera despite having taken a photography course. Somehow the f stops and aperture settings are just extra buttons when I'm in a hurry to snap a photo, so I normally keep my camera on the automatic setting. I extensively use my zoom and focus as I go.

As I waited for my Canada Geese Slow Motion Flying to load on YouTube this morning, I saw the blessing of this camera error.

Having recognized it as a blessing, I wrote it down on a blue slip of paper and dropped it into the glass bowl I wrote about in my Inkwell post, The Blessings Bowl.

And that got me thinking of dark days and how often we experience troubles and disappointments and instead of receiving sympathy or empathy, someone will tell us that every cloud has a silver lining. Or if one door closes another one opens. Or if a door closes, crawl out the window. Or... some other insensitive comment that makes us feel worse.


Except sometimes those options are real but we have to look hard to find them. 

This video was an easy find. Yes, I was discouraged when I first realized that I'd missed my chance because of the wrong setting, but instead of automatically deleting the raw footage, I saved it to my laptop and then watched it.

At the very least, this video shows beauty and grace in motion. I hope you can glean something from it as well.


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Anita Mae Draper is retired from the Canadian Armed Forces and lives on the prairie of southeast Saskatchewan, Canada with her hubby of 30 plus years and the youngest of their four kids. Anita is pleased to announce that her short story, Here We Come A-Wassailing, published in A Cup of Christmas Cheer, Volume 4, Heartwarming Tales of Christmas Present, Guideposts Books, October 2014, is a finalist for the Word Guild's 2015 Word Awards. Anita is represented by Mary Keeley of Books & Such Literary Management. You can find Anita Mae at  www.anitamaedraper.com



1 comment:

  1. Hey there anita. The video won't play here for me at work (but that's more because of work security features), but I'll check it out at home.
    High speed in film means more frames passing by the aperature, which slows down the action being filmed because there are more frames to capture each subtle nuance. The less amount of frames that get captured each second - the faster the action will look because some of the movement has been skipped.
    I only know this because of animation. The smoother the action needed, the more frames I have to draw. If something is moving slow - more drawings. If something is zipping across the screen - lest drawings.
    I guess your High Speed camera setting captures more frames.

    end of lecture *heh*
    p.s. I love your posts. They're always so cool and informative.

    ReplyDelete

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